King’s Birthday and Coronation Honours 2023: Whanganui illustrator and educator Sandra Morris says NZOM award ‘unbelievable’

Sandra Morris has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as an illustrator and to education.

Whanganui illustrator and educator Sandra Morris has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours for her services as an illustrator and to education.

Morris said the honour was “unbelievable”.

“I certainly was not expecting that - in fact, I nearly didn’t even see it,” she said.

When Morris received the email letting her know she was part of the honours list, she first thought it was some kind of scam.

“I can’t think what word shone out at me, and I thought, oh my goodness I’d better read this.”

She thanked the many other illustrators working across the country and said this was recognition of a profession which often went unrecognised.

“Nobody realises what goes into creating a children’s picture book. You’ve got a huge responsibility... you’re really manipulating your reader into responding emotionally through a believable character.

“It’s massive and it’s not something you just whip up overnight and I just think it’s not really recognised yet in this country as well as it should be.”

Morris is an award-winning children’s and botanical illustrator, having written and published several nature and educational books.

She got started in illustration in the last year of her Bachelor of Arts, where one of her final projects was illustrating a children’s fairy tale.

While figuring out what to do next with her life, her dean let her know about a job he thought was perfect for her.

“It was a job at School Publication, the old learning media with the Ministry of Education and it was for a designer,” Morris said.

“It was the last day of application and he said ‘look, just ring them anyway’.”

She got the job, which is where she learned the relationship between pictures and illustrations.

Morris and her family had always had an interest in nature, and her love for botanical illustrations came from visiting places with diverse and unique plant life, such as Australia, the Subantarctic and the Auckland Botanic Gardens.

Her work in education started when she got a job teaching illustration and design part-time, after the publisher she was working for was bought out.

“I just loved teaching, I thought, gosh, I wish I’d done this years ago, it was fantastic.”

Once her contract ran out, she continued doing community education with adult students in Auckland and Whanganui and never stopped loving it.

“I just love working at that level with people where they want to be there and you’re not examining them, you’re not marking them or grading them.”

Her proudest achievement was managing to get her books published, a difficult thing for any author - especially when she first started.

“When I grew up there was nothing much on New Zealand natural history for children and when I started... there was very few natural history books for children,” she said.

Her first picture book, One Lonely Kakapo, won the Russell Clark award for illustration in 1992.

Since then, interest in children’s natural history books had grown significantly, which she was thrilled to see.

Morris has used money raised from artworks for several conservation organisations, including the Stevens/Bell Garden in Whanganui and the Pūkoro Miranda Shorebird Centre.

She is now part of New Zealand’s involvement in the 2025 Botanical Art Worldwide exhibition.

Morris is also working on publishing her next book, as well as continuing her work in education and hoping to inspire the next generation of illustrators.

“I’m hoping to get into some of the secondary schools to give lessons on botanical illustrations, I think that would be a great thing to get young talent coming out and into that world,” she said.